Steelers vs Ravens: Odds are even a loss could be a win for the season

The Steelers will not have QB Ben Roethlisberger in what was being considered an epic showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens Sunday night.

This game is now being viewed by many as an anti-climatic exercise in futility for the Steelers given their injuries, and their performance last week against the Kansas City Chiefs.

That is, if you believe in what the bookies in Vegas are saying, having changed the odds from the Steelers being favored by four and a half points, to the Ravens favored by three;

That is, if you believe what Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and all the talking heads in the mainstream media are projecting as the outcome of this game.

Of course, those same bookies in Vegas, a constituency NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL seem to curry from afar, picked the Steelers to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs by 12 points.

Of course, those same mainstream media types were projecting a blazing comet of a game by Haley's offense against the team that dismissed him as their head coach just 11 months ago.

It's too bad the credibility these prognosticators have with the public isn't as fickle as their success rate.

One thing that is more certain than prognosticator's picks; more certain than Goodell's regular referees making the replacement refs look competent; more certain than Ravens head coach John Harbaugh finding another way to demonstrate his lack of sportsmanship or class...

...one absolute certainty about this game, win or lose, is that "how" the Steelers play will set the tone for the rest of their season.

If the Steelers offensive line that showed up against the New York Giants makes an appearance Sunday night at Heinz Field, Byron Leftwich (whose last meaningful game was ironically enough in November four years ago) will have time to use the cannon arm he still possesses to find Mike Wallace or Emmanuel Sanders down field, in an area the Ravens are weak...

...and if the Steelers running backs that performed so well against the Bengals, Redskins and Giants don't hesitate at the LOS but instead use the power running they showed in previous games, Byron Leftwich will be spared the kind of brutal hits that otherwise would make him the Elijah Price of the NFL.

If the Steelers defense can reprise the creative coverage it implemented against RGIII of the Redskins, and make the Ravens receivers cry "No Mas" like Victor Cruz of the Giants did...

...and if James Harrison, LaMarr Woodley, Brett Keisel and Lawrence Timmons adopt the Cobra Kai mantra of "Strike first, strike hard, show no mercy" against Ravens QB Joe Flacco, then win or lose, they will have set the right tone for the rest of the season.

Lest they forget, the Steelers have the Cleveland Browns the very next game. The Browns always ramp themselves up for games against the Steelers; a win against their hated rivals gives the Browns and their fans the only solace in their otherwise perpetual years of sorrows.

And then the Steelers, facing the Ravens the very next week in Baltimore, will also be going up against the Ravens' home field winning streak of 15 games, which began after the Ravens loss to the Steelers in 2010.

These three games will define the remainder of the Steelers 2012 season, regardless of whether they make the playoffs, or how far they go.

If the Steelers team from the first 2011 Ravens game, or the team from last week's game against the Chiefs show up Sunday night, that will indicate the team has lost heart. Every team facing them going forward will be smelling blood, and the Ravens will have no fear in their hearts, or doubts in their minds, when they take the field at the site of their latest super bowl victory in Week 13.

The Steelers face an unenviable task; they face without their franchise quarterback a bitter rival who claims a 7-2 record .

But this is a team sport, and the Steelers epitomize the concept of team. Head coach Mike Tomlin is the paragon of leadership, a coach who commands the respect of his players as no other, as was proven by Tomlin being selected as the number one coach for whom NFL players most want to play. The Steelers roster is filled with team oriented players like Willie Colon, Heath Miller, Ryan Clark, Brett Keisel; men who have made careers out of "One Team, One Goal".

This team is full of men who thrive on "Us versus Them", not ESPN highlights. Professionals who relish being counted out for the adrenaline rush that comes with defying the odds.

It is this team mentality, this banding together against adversity, this synergy of talents and personalities that makes the Steelers as a whole greater than the sum of its parts; even when one of the missing parts is Ben Roethlisberger. They did it in 2010 against all odds, and the learned opinions of the mainstream media. They can do it again this year.

Vegas bookies and the Ravens be warned: Odds are the true Pittsburgh Steelers are coming.

Homage to the People of Pittsburgh: My Pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of Steeler Nation

The word Haj is Arabic for "pilgrimage". As the fifth pillar of Islam, it is considered a religious duty for every Muslim capable of doing so at some point in their lifetime, to visit the Holy City of Mecca. The Haj is a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people and their submission to their God.

Malcom X is quoted as describing the Haj thusly:

"There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood... But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held."

I don't use the term loosely, and nor do I mean to trivialize the meaning or import of such an important element of anyone's religion, but like Malcolm X my life was changed by a people displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood.For to me, this trip to Pittsburgh and Heinz Field was as much a spiritual and emotional pilgrimage as it was to attend a sporting event.

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but left during the Diaspora. I left behind my mother and older brother, as well as many friends who remained. Some are still there, others followed later on seeking a better living elsewhere.

A week before my 21^st birthday, my father died of a heart attack while he was getting into my car to drive to the bus stop to pick me up for a visit home from the University of Pittsburgh. When he was an hour late, I had a friend pick me up and drop me off. While I knew my mother was traveling, finding both my car and my father’s in the driveway, but no one home, was ominous.

A couple of hours earlier my brother found my dad face down in the driveway and applied CPR but to no avail. The shock of his death, and the haze I was under for my last two years of college, as well as the lack of opportunity (and my mother’s urging) is what finally pushed me out of the Pittsburgh area and to Washington DC.

I’ve been back only a few times for brief visits with my brother, and once to settle my mother’s estate. It wasn’t until a couple of seemingly disparate events took place somewhat recently that circumstances led me to take this journey.

The first was in 2006 when the company I worked for was purchased by PNC Bank. It seemed fitting to others that a bank from Pittsburgh, a strong union town, would purchase the entity I worked for; after all, my job involves unions as well. But to me, it was a whisper in my ear that would not stop that I could not escape my roots.

My mother passed away from a stroke 13 years ago; again my brother was alone at the scene, applied CPR and stabilized her, but she passed away shortly after the ambulance arrived. Aside from my brother, I had no other familial ties to my birthplace.

The second event was my finding Behind The Steel Curtain. While I had followed the Steelers as regularly as I could by watching on national TV (and later DirecTV), it wasn’t until I began to frequent BTSC that I felt once again part of a community that shared the same values I grew up with; that shared my roots. While many readers have no connection to Pittsburgh other than through the Steelers, it is the commonality of that shared bond, of our affinity for the Steelers and their owners the Rooneys, that connects us. And in submersing myself within the vastness of Steeler Nation, I began to yearn for home again.

Pittsburgh is an easy place to make fun of, if one believes only that what’s current, or "hip" or "cool" is to be admired. At its core, even while embracing Starbucks and the latest in computer technology, Pittsburgh and its people are old fashioned. They focus on who you are, not what you earn; they care whether you are kind and friendly to the elderly couple down the street, not how many senators or sports stars you know.

Get past the fawning accolades you hear about the Rooney family, read beneath the national hype they receive during Steeler Super Bowls and realize that the owners of the Steelers are beloved in Pittsburgh because none of that stuff matters to the Rooneys. The Chief, Art Rooney Sr. lived in the same neighborhood all his life, and walked to work. He ate with his employees and knew the names of all their children and grandchildren, and whether someone was sick, or had passed away. His son Dan is the same way; he comes back from his Ambassadorship in Ireland to attend Steeler games; he eats with the employees; he eschewed a driver and walked to work when he still worked in the front office. But this wasn’t unique to the Rooneys; this was characteristic of the people of Pittsburgh.

Many people know of the city for its sports teams. The Steelers, the Penguins, and yes, even the Pirates.

Many people know the history of Pittsburgh.

In the late 1800s Pittsburgh was the city that helped preserve the Union during the Civil War; it produced over half of all steel and over a third of all glass made in the United States during that conflict.

In the 1940’s Pittsburgh was the center of Roosevelt’s ‘Arsenal of Democracy’, providing much of America’s steel during World War II.

In 1964, over 2,000 Pittsburghers volunteered their valuable time to help a six year old comatose boy none of them knew. These strangers responded to a newspaper article describing the desperate attempts by the child’s parents to preserve the child’s ability to function should he ever wake from his coma. Five strangers at a time, three times a day, seven days a week for nine weeks, these people unfailingly showed up to exercise this comatose boy’s arms, legs, and neck to restore muscle tone, and to try to re-awaken and re-train the boy’s brain and nervous system.

Today, that six year old boy owns a home, manages his own investments, and volunteers his time to help others.

That six year old boy is my older brother.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to reminisce often about my childhood, as we are all wont to do. As I’ve watched my children grow and go off to college, the loss I feel for the laughing little boy I would throw into the air, or the little girl who would sit for hours in my lap pretending to read my books along with me, would beget within me also a sense of loss for my own past.

And the more time I spent watching the Steelers, and on BTSC reading Homer J’s, or Ivan’s wonderful pieces on Pittsburgh and the Steeler Way, the more I realized I had a pilgrimage to take, an obligation to fulfill.

Similar to how Malcom X described the Haj, is the annual pilgrimage Steeler Nation takes; whether "blue-eyed blondes, [or] black-skinned Africans", Steeler Nation encompasses all races, all nationalities, and they all participate in the same ritual of following the Steelers, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood.

And since the epicenter of Steeler Nation, both in terms of location as well as membership is Pittsburgh, and since within me was a geas that could not be denied, it was to Heinz Field I went.

The people who helped my brother surely have long since passed; their names lost with the passing of my parents; I had no allusions of any grand gestures to make. And none were required; that is not the Pittsburgh way.

Instead, I communed with my people, and while doing so gave to each a small but very Pittsburgh-like gesture. I volunteered to take pictures of couples, so they could be together in a picture in front of their favorite players’ uniforms in the Great Hall, instead of one always being alone in the picture; I held my umbrella over an elderly woman in the driving rain while she struggled to get out of a taxi; I gave up my seat in a restaurant to a young family with toddlers, so the parents could more easily sit with their children; I thanked the shuttle driver by name, and complimented him on his driving in heavy game day traffic.

And I befriended a lonely Redskins fan named Kenny who was sitting next to me at the game. Surrounded by loud and boisterous Steeler fans, I welcomed him to Pittsburgh and reassured him, after the third or fourth time he apologized for cheering for his team, that he was welcome to enjoy his team’s moments without concern and for him to let me know if he needed anything during his stay.

And I shouted myself hoarse when "Renegade" played in the fourth quarter, leaping to my feet and waving my Terrible Towel (original model, circa 1975 as shown in Terrible Towel Wall exhibit at Heinz Field) in the air with 50,000 of my people, my brothers and sisters, my family.

permalink: 2012/10/30/3573046/my-pilgrimage-to-the-holy-shrine-of-steeler-nation

All-Hallowed Heinz – All Treat, No Tricks

A long time ago, in a Pennsylvania township far far away, a young PaVaSteeler would begin thinking about Halloween in August. For weeks he would read and re-read all the stories he could find by Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of Horror to find inspiration for his next costume. For days he would scrounge around the house looking for materials to construct the scariest costume he could devise, certain that "…this year, this will finally be the one costume that will truly strike fear in all who confront it.

But alas, no matter how realistic he thought his "Illustrated Man" self-drawn tattoos looked, how life-like he believed his "Cthulhu" costume appeared, or how macabre he felt behind his mask in his Red Death getup, when he confronted adults going door to door in his creations, he always heard the patronizing tone of their feigned screams of horror.

While such disappointments never fully ruined his Halloween, young PaVaSteeler never felt he experienced the kind of birthday one should expect being born on All Hallows Eve.

As with most people, the young rebel PaVaSteeler grew up and matured, and as I changed, so did my expectations for my birthday. My birthday present to myself this year, a [first time] trip to Heinz Field to watch the Steelers unmask RGIII and the Redskins turned out far better than I could have hoped, scary weather and all.

The Steelers were certainly in for a fright, or so thought many football pundits and citizens of Steeler Nation. RGIII came into town masquerading as the third ranked quarterback by passer rating, two slots above Ben Roethlisberger; first in passing completion percentage, sixth in rushing, and first in total hype for the season.

The Redskins team as a whole was coming into town disguised as a legitimate threat, having the week before led last year’s Super Bowl champions New York Giants by three points with less than two minutes to play. While they lost that game, the Redskins were confident the Steelers’ defense, itself suspected of only being disguised as a "Steel Curtain", would fall easy prey to the multiple threats its young QB phenom presented.

Let me summarize it how I saw it from row Z of Section 510: it was a classic Steeler beat-down. An irresistible (in many ways) force in RGIII met an immovable object in Coach LeBeau and the Steelers’ defense, and the force lost. I’ll let others give you the technical and statistical breakdown of the game. The only scary part of the game was the recurring fear I had that the Steelers would somehow turn into a 22 man Three Stooges Revival troupe as they took the field in their Halloween uniforms.

Instead, let me share with you my impression of Heinz Field.

Heinz Field is indeed hallowed ground. Being a Pittsburgh native who left a long time ago and only infrequently returned to visit, until Sunday I had only seen Heinz from afar. As fantastic as it looks on the skyline, you can’t appreciate what a tremendous architectural and iconic place it is until you’ve had a chance to walk its confines with 45,000 to 50,000 die hard Steeler fans who showed up to the game.

I’ve visited many stadiums across the country to watch the Steelers play, and in all honesty, I don’t believe a single one comes close to marrying contemporary design and functionality with homage to the city and people who have supported it's team and the events that make up its history like Heinz Field does.

FedEx Field in Washington DC is such a monument to revenue generation and political deal making that any sign of the Redskins’ long and storied history is merely an adornment to the true purpose of the place; to line the pockets of the politicians who sought it for their jurisdiction, and enrich the owner who uses it to wring every last cent possible out of Redskins fans.

Reliant Field in Houston is a modern design marvel, but the Texans have no history, and the place just feels like a typical "bigger in Texas" memorial to itself.

M&T Stadium in Baltimore is…located in Baltimore; not much more needs to be said. It is functional and easy to get to, but frankly, aside from the garish purple which abounds in it, it doesn't really reflect what little history or success the Ravens have achieved. You could replace all of the Ravens’ logos with those of the East Carolina University Pirates and visitors from out of town wouldn’t know the difference.

But Heinz Field is a pantheon of images and symbols of both the Steelers and the city of Pittsburgh. Its two main wings and U shape configuration greet you as a welcomed "aht of tahn" guest as you dis-embark from an 1800’s style riverboat.

Make no mistake however; as home-like as Heinz Field is to the Steelers, opposing teams and their visiting fans bear the full brunt of Steeler Nation football. The steel overhangs at the top of the sideline bleachers reflect outward our fans’ cheers and cries of "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go". Boos for blown calls by the referees or the punk-like antics of opposing players like the Redskins’ DeAngelo Hall rain down through the stands and onto the field in true Pittsburgh-like fashion; we’ll let you know without question our displeasure, but unlike places like Seattle or domed stadiums, we don’t audibly beat you senseless with our opinion. We let the Steelers do that.

Unlike its predecessor Three Rivers Stadium, which was a closed-in circle of cold and foreboding concrete, Heinz Field, with its prominently displayed steel superstructure paying homage to Pittsburgh’s industrial roots; its wings holding twin umbrellas atop its spiraling walkways like a gentleman sheltering his lady from the rain, and its see-through design mirroring the open and unembellished nature of the people of Pittsburgh says more about the character of the Rooney family and what they truly feel for their city and the people who have supported their business for generations than any billionaire’s name over a library or university building.

Heinz Field is the antithesis of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ billion dollar temple of self-importance. The Rooney’s have built an iconic and living memorial to the people and city that embraced their $2,500 purchase of a rag-tag collection of football outcasts and never gave up hope that someday it might make something of itself.

Because the Rooneys are a part of the fabric of the history and culture of Pittsburgh, and have been for generations; because the Rooneys never forgot their roots by thinking money or fame made them "better" than the people who paid their dimes and dollars to support the Steelers…

… Only because of such a relationship between the public and a private organization is such a thing as Heinz Field possible. If you are a member of Steeler Nation, and want to truly understand who and what the Steelers are, get thyself to Heinz Field. I promise you, it’s no trick, and an experience to which it is well worth treating yourself.